Finishing up in Kyoto
Apr 13, 08:13 PM
In the morning we woke up and had a Japanese style breakfast. This consists of pretty much the opposite of everything I would think to eat in the morning: pickled seaweed covered in little dried fish, soybeans, pork miso soup, and tea among others.
We hopped back on the bus and were soon at a train station outside of Kyoto. This was a sightseeing train up through the hills and into a bamboo forest. We walked around among the various paths and gardens for a few hours and eventually made our way down to visit some more shrines and temples. The food here was exceptionally good and the restaurants all placed emphasis on their local foods: pickled radishes, cucumbers, and a special tofu dish that is made out of 40 or so layers of the skin that forms on a bowl of tofu.
Later that day we visited another temple that was over 1300 years old. It featured a garden and many rooms still laid out in the traditional style: paper screen doors, open rooms and mats on the floor. We shuffled across the cold floors in our socks while looking out on the rain soaked garden. This was personally my favorite temple and one of many times when I wish that photography was not prohibited.
Soon we were on the bullet train back to tokyo, already exhausted but ready for what was to me the real start of the trip.
It's Suntory Time << - >> Tokyo
